Rameau's Niece

The home of Dr. Samuel Lipi rose above her, tall, modern, circular, just the sort of home Dr. Lipi should have. He had pointed it out to her proudly as they left his office together one evening, and she had wondered if he had a circular bed.

She rushed into the building. "It's an emergency!" she said to the doorman, aware suddenly that she was flushed and out of breath, that she was talking to herself and still panting through her nose like an angry dragon. "An emergency!"

The elevator brought her closer and closer in a sickening rush, jerked to a halt, and deposited her, staggering, with blocked ears, on the twenty-eighth floor. Twenty-eight, she thought. Aha! Aha, what? She didn't really care.

She stood for a moment and looked around, trying to calm down. Then a door down the hall opened, and Dr. Lipi's handsome head poked out. "Margaret?" he said. "Is that really you? What is it? The inlay?" He looked at her with concern and held out his arm. "Come in. Come in. Welcome to my little cave."

She looked around and realized that when she had imagined a circular bed, she had snobbishly underestimated him. His apartment was furnished in expensive Italian pieces, so contemporary a few years ago that they were now already dated. All the walls had been knocked down so that it looked like a loft, a tunnellike low-ceilinged loft.

Margaret could not yet bring herself to look at Dr. Lipi himself, so she gazed out his window at the city, the nighttime skyline softened by a pearly gray cloud of damp June filth. The ceiling loomed just above her head, it seemed, as close and intimate as a large hat. In her ceiling hat, up so high, looking down so low, she felt queasy and weak. She had to sit down. She turned. Dr. Lipi was watching her. She saw a black couch with large leather cushions. She went to it, lowering herself carefully, closing her eyes for a moment, then opening them suddenly, feeling strangely vulnerable.

"It's not the inlay," she said.

Dr. Lipi was not wearing his white shirt, she noticed, which disappointed her. He was wearing a blue T-shirt. Didn't anyone understand anything about erotic fantasy anymore?

"It's not even an emergency."

An Englishman would have known to wear a white dentist shirt. Always. Just in case someone should drop by. Even if he wasn't a dentist.

"It's not even about my teeth."

Why, the English liked women in little maids' uniforms, didn't they? Well, not Edward, actually, thank God.

"You're out of uniform," she said.

He smiled, then turned toward a large mirror as if to make sure.

Margaret followed his gaze. Well, she thought, looking at his beautiful reflection, maybe we can do without the white shirt after all. He was wearing shorts, tight-fitting gym shorts. She stared at his bare legs, at his bare arms.

"Nice place, Dr. Lipi," she said, not taking her eyes off his body.

"Sam."

"Sam. Right."

"I'm glad you like it, Margaret," he said. "And I'm glad you're here. Whatever the reason, Margaret, I'm glad you're here."

"You are?"

Dr. Lipi went over to a platform in one corner of the large room that seemed to be a kitchen, a kitchen so streamlined and technologically advanced that it could, with few alterations, have flown to Paris in under four hours.

"Are you really all right, Margaret? Do you want a drink?"

"Don't I look all right?" Margaret said.

"Well, yes, you look wonderful, you always look wonderful, I just meant, well, you know, you come over and say it's an emergency, and I guess you look as though you don't feel all right..."

Margaret sighed. "You're right," she said. "I'm not all right. I needed some company. And no thank you. I don't drink. Ever. Again."

Dr. Lipi took a beer out of the refrigerator for himself and stood on his platform and looked down at her, across at her, looked at her for a long time. He was uncharacteristically silent. No mention of the dental pulp chamber or the mechanics of mastication.

Well, well, well, Margaret thought. Good. So drop dead, Edward. Pleasure, Edward, is the only thing desired. Therefore, pleasure is the only thing desirable. I desire Dr. Lipi, Edward, therefore he is desirable. If he is desirable, he is pleasure, therefore he is the only thing desirable. Right?

She carefully watched the muscles of Dr. Lipi's thighs as he walked toward her.

Right.

"Margaret," he said, approaching slowly.

Observe and clarify through logic. He has slim, strong legs, practically hairless. Does he have them waxed or what? Why are they so tan? Observe, observe, Margaret. She stared at his thighs and then, helplessly, at his crotch. Ah, and from what I observe, I can logically deduce a great deal. This proposition really is a proposition. This is not a joke. This is no longer a joke.

He stared at her in a way she could not mistake and said her name again.

Why, we don't need uniforms, after all, she thought.

He stood before her in his Michelangelo pose, the beer bottle dangling by the neck from his slender fingers with their dentist-clean fingernails. She looked up at him, unable to speak, unable to move.

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